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Thursday, October 31, 2013

The Perplexity of Halloween

I've never truly understood the fascination with Halloween. If you look at any polls asking people their greatest fear death is always high on the list, however we have this one day centered around a culture of death. It's a celebration of death and fear. The T.V. is constantly playing movies like "Nightmare On Elm Street" or "Friday the 13th", people are putting tombstones and zombies in their yard, and families are going to haunted houses. What is so attractive about these things?

Now don't get me wrong, I am not one to say that Christians should boycott Halloween. The point of this post is not to try and convince you to stay in your home, lock your doors, and turn out all the lights. That would simply be giving into the culture of fear. I am simply saying that I don't understand it... but I think it is an opportunity for us to embrace.

What does the Bible say counters fear? 1 John 4:18 says that "...perfect love casts out all fear..." So if we have a day that our culture has built on a foundation of fear the best thing to do to take out that foundation is to love. Halloween is a day where Christians should look to be even more adamant to show love to their neighbors. And you know what the greatest thing about it is? You don't even have to go out to do it, they'll come to you! Isn't that what the church has always wanted? People coming to their doors looking for you to love them, looking for something? Okay maybe we aren't envisioning them looking for candy when they come knocking on our doors but it is still an opportunity.

I actually read this point from a fellow blogger recently she made this statement:

"This is the only night through the entire year that most of your neighbors and mine are going to come knocking on our doors. The only night." - TroubleFace Mom

If our neighbors are coming to our doorone night a year don't we want to take advantage of that? If we want to show the love of Christ then this is the perfect opportunity.

Now I know for me to write this on Halloween night it is kind of late for you to change your plans this year. I myself, am actually at work tonight (so I am doing my best to show love here), but we have a whole year to plan for this next opportunity. What can you do next year when neighbors are out on the streets and knocking on doors.

I know of one friend that took the opportunity and set out chairs and a canopy in their driveway and served hot dogs to all the trick or treaters.

Let's make a new Halloween competition. Instead of competing for the scariest costume, let's compete for the most creative idea to show love to our neighbors. That sounds like a Halloween culture changer right there!

If you've done something creative to reach out on Halloween or you know of someone who has feel free to share it in the comments as inspiration.

2 comments:

Okay, I completely agree with you that we are to show love to our neighbors but we are also, as Christians suppose to be set apart from the rest of the world. How can we do this and still celebrate halloween? I can see serving hotdogs in your front yard and telling the kids about Christ. With no halloween decorations and no costumes, which is easy to do when you have no children but what will you do when you have kids. How will you teach them to represent Christ on halloween? How do we teach or kids to live a life where stand apart from the rest of the world. My family and I spent the last month doing tons of harvest things and putting Bible lessons with it. They may not get to get dressed up one night a year and get a bunch of candy but over the last month they have gotten to do and learn a bunch of really cool things and we also have done something’s to help out neighbors and people in our community.

I never said we have to celebrate Halloween I simply said let's not hide from it. Let's brainstorm and, more importantly, pray about ways to take advantage of the opportunity, to show love to the people who are knocking on our doors. You may notice that I only shared an example of a friend and not one of my own. That means that I am not claiming to have the answer by any means, I am simply challenging us to think outside the box of our 'normal' way of doing things. One thing I do wonder though is why couldn't you do the hot dog idea with kids? My friend who did it had three young ones at the time (he now has 4).